Style.css and functions.php files are normally modified in WordPress child theme, we can find lots of example about how to do on them. However, when we had a chance to modify template-tags.php in child theme, we spent some time to find solution.

Meta keywords and Meta description are 2 important elements in SEO. By default, WordPress does not provide Meta keywords and description for single post. Some users just manually add meta information or use plugins.

If you are a blogger who does not like to use too many plugins and you want to do more modifications by yourself. you can try to copy the following code directly then put it into the section of <head> of Header.php file, if you can find other meta lines, just put the code right after those meta information lines:

We updated CodeEase.com due to new technologies and new devices. More and more people are using mobile devices now, some people will never use computer then, so the website should follow the new times.

The old face of CodeEase.com was the following one, It was OK for any computers, but might not perfect for cell phone.

If you used IIS server or Windows Hosting, you might know an annoying problem that if your website not be visited for while, the next visiting needs longer loading time, you have to wait up to over 60 seconds if your hosting is not good. This is because IIS has a feature for low traffic websites it recycles unused worker processes.

We could delete junk comments if we have not installed plugin such as Akismet to protect our site from spam in WordPress Admin Dashboard, but we might have to delete the comment one by one so very slow, or, we use another “rude” way, delete records from comments table.

When we tried to update a WordPress blog website which from version 3.0.1 to version 3.7.1, we got trouble – a Fatal error.

Fatal error: Call to undefined method Arras_Widget_Tag_Cloud::WP_Widget_Tag_Cloud() in /home/….xxx.com/xxxxxx/wp-content/themes/arras/library/widgets.php on line 404

You can see that we had a mistake when we updated the WordPress site, we did not change the theme to default theme, but still using a 3rd party theme named Arras. Obviously the error caused by Arras theme.

How to clear the "Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance" message after doing automatic upgrade?

As part of the automatic upgrade WordPress places a file named .maintenance in the blog base folder (folder that contains the wp-admin folder). If that file exists, then vistors will see the message Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.

To stop that message from being displayed to vistors, just delete the .maintenance file. The automatic upgrade should be executed again, just in case it failed.

However, for our case,we did not need to remove .maintenance file, and the site could be visited ok after short while. But the new problem was: The Admin page became a blank page.

Then we searched info about Admin blank page and spent long time, we tried all solutions which we could find, for example:

Create an empty plugins folder Via FTP or your host’s control panel, navigate to the wp-contents folder (directory) Via FTP or your host’s control panel, rename the folder "plugins" to "plugins.hold" Via FTP or your host’s control panel, create new folder called "plugins" Login to your WordPress administration menus Via FTP or your host’s control panel, delete the empty "plugins" you previous created Via FTP or your host’s control panel, rename "plugins.hold" back to "plugins"

2: Remove extra space at the end of wp-config file, and also at the beginning of the file;

3: Remove extra space at the end and beginning of a file named “functions.php”. the file located in theme folder, some people said located in wp-includes folder.

But anyway, what ever we changed which files, we still ONLY got an blank Admin page.

4: Later we found a case from internet: If want to deactivate all plugins, sometimes IT DOESN’T WORK if only change plugins folder name, but need to change database:

Then we go back to WordPress help information here and choose the “phpMyAdmin” way. wen to our site’s online database control panel, and use phpMyAdmin to change data in datatable wp_options table.

However, we found the data in the column option_value field has been already “a:0:{}”, which means no plugin activated now. Because before we started to upgrade, we have already deactivated all plugins that we have installed.

So, our case is really different with above all cases, and different with most of cases which descripted in internet.

So what’s wrong with our WordPress site?

Finally we found our solution and upgraded successfully ! please read the procedure which we did:

We think since our site still can be visited without any problem, and we have known all known solutions in internet are different with our case. so we’d better think about the exact reason for our case;

Our site could be visited all the time but only admin was not correct, so we thought why we did not just replace Admin folder with backup folder ? (so now you know the backup is so important before you upgrade your WordPress site).

1: Then we change the wp-admin foler name to wp-admin_bak, use FTP tool to upload our backup wp-admin folder to online site.

Bingo! now we found our Admin can be accessed and can be logged in ! and also our site still visit correctly.

2: The dashboard still show the 2.8.4 version and gives information to upgrade. And also we made sure all plugins were deactivated.

But, this time we did another thing: we changed theme to default theme which WordPress provided. Not sure this step is required or not. but we just did it.

3: We used automatically upgraded again. … But, We still got the same error:

“Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.”

4: OK, we did not have other choice, since it asked that we should at least wait a minute, then why we do not wait? Then we left away to read news, to watch TV …

5: About 30 minutes later we came back, the error screen was still there, when we tried to refresh screen, it asked if refresh, something might have be restarted, but we were using Chrome browser, we think the prompt message should be from Chrome browser. Then we changed the URL in browser to www.oursitesdomain.com/wp-admin and click enter key…

7: Bingo! Now we got another message (no more a blank screen !! ) which indicated the upgraded process did not upgrade database successfully (or completely, we can not remember exact message.) Do you want to upgrade database ?

Yes, sure! We selected upgrading database automatically.

8: Then finally we got a dashboard screen like the following:

You can see the WordPress version is already the newest version, but just there was a message on the top indicated: An automated WordPress update has failed to complete, please attempt the update again now. We then clicked the update again now link. Then everything showing OK finally.

We got our site back. This is our case, it is really different with most of known case in the internet. We were lucky.

Let us remind you again: DO backup files and database before you upgrade anything !